Harley Benton ST-20 BK Standard Series

This guitar is a very solid guitar for the money. The next and body are good and it is a really good platform to build a solid partscaster. Great value for money. Good entry level / beginner guitar if you are prepared to put some work in (intonation, action and fret ends) and upgrade into it (factor in an additional €40-65 for tuning machines and possibly an input jack, although it's still playable/ enjoyable without them). My ratings are taking the price into context.

Positives include:
- the neck and body is good and has a reassuring weight to them;
- the bridge / tremolo seems solid and stays in tune well once the tuners are changed;
- the pickup selector feels solid;
- the strings were much better than I expected but I still replaced mine to clean the fretboard;
- and the paint job was fine.

Negatives include:
- The tuners are really bad and keep slipping, with poor tuning stability (I replaced them straight away with the harley benton locking tuners, which are really good for the money);
- The input jack seems very weak and cuts in and out, so will need to be replaced. Short term solution was to unscrew the plate and bend it back into position but still not solid enough;
- Pick-ups are fine but a little thin sounding.
- Fret ends are a little sharp but easily fixed with a light sanding (first time I've done this and it went fine).

Update: I replaced the input jack with an Allparts gold one and that fixed the cutting out issue and somehow made the pick-ups sound much fuller and remove the thin sounding issue I mentioned above. I was thinking of changing the pick-ups later but I don't think I will bother now. Be careful changing the input jack though, as the new one was too big for the stock plate, so I replaced that with a Fender one (although a decent drill and bit would probably do the job on the stock plate). Guitar sounds good now.

My 4th Harley Benton guitar in as many months. This has been my second purchase from the Standard range. I wanted a Stratocaster copy, but didn't want to spend the extra money for one of the more expensive models. I already have a Squier Affinity Strat, but it is need of some work on the nut that I wouldn't tackle myself. I would have to say that this guitar won't disappoint at the price point. It looks stunning in the black finish, and I found no blemishes on the body or the neck, which is worth the price of the guitar on its own. I prefer Strats with a floating tremolo and was able to achieve that on this guitar without too much trouble. The tension screws on the tremolo block were out of alignment with each other, which was a bit of a problem, but if need be I'll replace the screws. Suffice to say that it is possible to float the tremolo on this guitar without having to buy any replacement parts. It's set for the 009 gauge strings that came with the guitar and I'll be replacing them with 009s in future to save having to readjust the tremolo. What else was wrong? One or two fret ends were very slightly sharp, and the frets could do with filing to take the roughness off them, which you can feel when bending the strings, but other than that I could find no faults. The tuning pegs are best described as adequate, but I won't replace them unless I run into problems. Once the strings were stretched the guitar held tune reasonably well. I lowered the action slightly, but that was only to suit me, and the guitar was well set up when it arrived. Intonation was spot on except the lower E and A, but that could well have been down to me fiddling about with the tremolo block. The pickups may need adjusting, as they are the same height off the strings at both ends instead of being slightly higher on the treble strings, but that is very easy to remedy and I'll do it myself. Some people say the pickups on this guitar aren't great, but you need to experiment with their height and the sound coming from the amp. They are at least as good as on my Squier Affinity Strat, which cost twice the price of this guitar nearly 10 years ago. More to the point, this guitar sounds enough like a Strat to be a keeper. I've played guitars (as an amateur) for nearly 60 years, and this will more than fit the bill for most players. If you are mainly a Strat player then maybe the 62CC would be a better buy, but if you just want a Strat model on your rack, you need look no further. Obviously I have a fair bit of experience of tinkering with guitars, but it is easy to learn from You Tube, including how to float the tremolos on these etc. If you have the dexterity to play it doesn't take much to learn how to set them up etc.

My dad wanted to learn the guitar again after decades of endless responsibilities so I bought him this as it was the cheapest electric guitar available from any website we looked.

The quality on this model is phenomenal, blows my bass -with some QC issues- which costs almost twice that out of the water in terms of the paintjob, pickguard, neck and the wood finish.

The sound is pleasant with a digital Amplitude clean tone amp and it works well with distortion too. The only problems we have encountered with this guitar is some heavy fret buzz on the 3 higher strings, can be fixed with a good setup from a luthier, and the tuning problem it has. It goes out of tune pretty much instantly, although it isn't that bad playing alone, trying playing bass-guitar was impossible.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with this purchase, very good value for money. With a proper string and neck setup and with some locked tuners this will be unbeatable at this price!

The neck on this guitar is satin finished. Very smooth - no rough frets. I prefer floating tremolo so adjustments were made to neck action, tremolo springs, intonation and bridge height. Very fast and playable was the result.
Pickups seemed a little mushy at first, but with set up came classic single coil sound, bright and punchy.
My humble opinion has it that the string tree on the D - G strings at headstock is superfluous, and would simply add friction to the tremolo action.
I popped a spare tremolo arm spring in the arm well, and now the arm is stable, and does not flop around. I expect with settling in, and a fresh set of strings, that tuning stability can be achieved.
I wanted an inexpensive guitar for busking, and this is perfect - cheap and very, very cheerful! (Works well with the Vox AC15 sound on the Vox battery amp).
All in all excellent value!

Immediately I apologize for my English, I speak it at an intermediate level.

When I looked at the reviews of this guitar, I was a little shocked - is it really possible to buy a good musical instrument for such money, I thought?! I was very interested in this and I recently got my Benton ST 20. You know, it really seems more expensive and much better than you expect, solid wood, well painted, smooth frets without ringing sounds - beautiful.

The sound of the guitar is good for its price, but even if this is not enough for you, you can easily install any other pickups. For me, the usual ones are enough, I'm not a professional, just a beginner in the world of electric guitars, but I think that my journey started with the right choice :)

This is a stratocaster style guitar with a maple neck and basswood body.. This is the best guitar you can get in this price range and the sound is amazing! It has a volume knob, two tone knobs, 3 single coil pickups. It has a 5 way switch which allows you to select single pickups or blend the sound of two pickups for example. This guitar gives you so many possibilities in terms of tone shaping, but it already sounds great out of the box.With a little bit of reverb, this guitar sounds as good as my fender strat. The harley benton st20bk guitar has 22 frets and also comes with a tremolo system. Other colours are also available but the black one looks better with the glossy finish.